Congress won't pass budget this year.

[Guest guest]

Partial article posted here. See passage in red.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/35647.html

Congress is poised to miss its April 15 deadline for finishing next year’s budget without even considering a draft in either chamber.

Unlike citizens’ tax-filing deadline, Congress’s mid-April benchmark is nonbinding. And members seem to be in no rush to get the process going.

Indeed, some Democratic insiders suspect that leaders will skip the budget process altogether this year — a way to avoid the political unpleasantness of voting on spending, deficits and taxes in an election year — or simply go through a few of the motions, without any real effort to complete the work.

Regan Lachapelle, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), would go only so far as saying that the budget “is on a list of things that are possible for this work period†— a reference to the window that opens when members roll back into town Monday and closes when they leave around Memorial Day.

Congress has failed to adopt a final budget four times in the past 35 years — for fiscal years 1999, 2003, 2005 and 2007 — according to a recent Congressional Research Service report. If the House does not pass a first version of the budget resolution, it will be the first time since the implementation of the 1974 Budget Act, which governs the modern congressional budgeting process.

The practical consequences of failing to produce a federal budget for next year are about the same as they are for a family that doesn’t set a plan for income and spending: Congress doesn’t need a budget to tax or spend, but enforcing discipline is harder without one. And, like a family that misses out on efficiencies because it hasn’t taken a hard look at its finances, Congress can’t use reconciliation rules to cut the deficit if the House and the Senate don’t adopt the same budget. Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/35647.html#ixzz0kuLQrVUH

[Guest guest]

" Indeed, some Democratic insiders suspect that leaders will skip the budget

process altogether this year †" a way to avoid the political unpleasantness of

voting on spending, deficits and taxes in an election year †" or simply go

through a few of the motions, without any real effort to complete the work. "

If the Republicans had any brains, they would hold up passage of the budget

using the national healthcare system funding as a bargaining chip. Cut the

budget for it and they will pass the budget. Don't cut the bidget for the

national healthcare system and they will go through the budget line by line and

cut out all the prok barrel spending. In the first case, the Democrats lose. In

the second case, the political parties lose but the taxpayers win.

Administrator